Since it’s the Chicago area, it could be some nuts went to court and stopped proper management, or nuts run the forest preserve board, or they don’t have or won’t appropriate the money to do it. I have driven by a couple of them regularly for twenty years, and they have never been touched. They did put in a paved bike/walking path along the edge of one, just feet from dead trees and brush too thick to walk through.
The enviros started most of the lawsuits in the 70s so they could mismanage public land so it could still be an issue with them.
The thing that gets me is everyone was against clear cutting forests and that was the original issue. As far back as the 40s logging companies stopped clear cutting. Fly by night companies were still doing it though. I have no issue with the first enviros that stopped clear cutting. The issue was long after clear cutting was no longer allowed and logging companies were planting trees to replace those harvested they used clear cutting as an excuse to fund raise and convince people to support them.
We had pretty darn healthy forests in the 60s and 70s. The socialists will never leave well enough along though, they are still fighting the same battle when the issue was solved years ago. Logging, wood cutting, Christmas Tree cutting, livestock grazing brush and grass- these things all contribute to a healthy forest. The socialists now don’t want a healthy forest, or to save the critters they claim to want to save. They want power and that is what all of this is about.
Socialists are already working on controlling the food supply too. They don’t want us to produce our own food, they want us to import it. Makes it far easier to control the food supply.